DtG #10: Creating equitable hiring systems in design

Welcome to the tenth installment of Designing the Gap! It feels pretty good to hit double digits, and I’m genuinely grateful to all of you for reading.

This one’s about hiring in design: specifically, how we hire equitably.

We talk a lot about “inclusive design” in our profession, but we don’t often unpack what that means when it comes to our own hiring practices. I’ve been guilty of this myself, especially during interview loops, when I repeat the mantra “diverse teams build better products” without really pausing to examine what that actually means, or how I help make it happen.

So let’s talk about it.

Hiring in design has been kinda broken from the start

Most design orgs care deeply about building for diverse users—or at least say they do—but the hiring practices they rely on weren’t built with equity in mind. They were inherited from startups and agencies where pedigree, polish, and “fit” were gatekeepers.

We can’t keep saying “design is for everyone” while only hiring people with beautiful portfolios, a stack of recognizable logos, and a quirky, well-lit headshot on LinkedIn.

It goes deeper, too. We tend to gravitate toward work we recognize. If a candidate presents a flow from an app we use, we’re more inclined to pay attention. If they’ve worked in an adjacent space, we’re more likely to see their approach as “relevant.” But that familiarity biases us toward those who already move and speak in the same design circles we do.

This may help surface designers who are familiar with your space; but it also filters out those with nontraditional paths or different ways of solving problems.

Approaching hiring this way doesn’t guarantee quality, it just reinforces sameness.

What equitable hiring might look like

I use the word might here intentionally. I’m writing from a position of privilege: I’m a white, straight-presenting man who speaks English as a first language. I’ve worked for recognizable brands. My photo fits the LinkedIn mold. That gives me proximity to “default” in many rooms. 

When we talk about diversity in hiring, we often start with identity; race, gender, nationality. That’s critical. Hiring underrepresented talent must always be a priority. But equity in hiring also means interrogating how we evaluate talent, not just who we attract.

That means being critical of:

• how we structure our interview loops

• how we define “fit”

• how we evaluate “quality” or “craft”

• how we value lived experience

Let’s break that down.

A note on sourcing:

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that sourcing plays a huge role in equitable hiring, but it’s also a part of the process I’m less qualified to speak on, as a hiring manager rather than a recruiter. That said, hiring managers still have a responsibility to be mindful of bias before the screening process even begins. As you work with your recruiter to shape the brief, make sure you’re framing the role in a way that doesn’t unintentionally narrow the field. Recruiters are often more rigorously trained on inclusive sourcing practices; lean on them as a partner to talk it through.

Inclusive interview design

There are enough horror stories of people being caught in month-long interview loops where they have to present work several times, meet with several stakeholders, and participate in numerous panel interviews. I’m not going to belabor the point; just to say that when designing interview loops, we should approach them with the intent to prove ourselves wrong, not right.

We’ve regressed into a pattern where hiring manager interviews are short, surface-level, and largely focused on background. Then, instead of progressively building depth, we overcompensate in later rounds—asking candidates to present the same work multiple times or endure panels that don’t add much new insight.

Instead, those later stages could be better used to explore things like cross-functional collaboration, critical thinking, and how someone responds to real constraints, not just how well they can retell a case study.

Maria Pentkovski, a design leader who has worked at Turo, Evernote, and Upwork, shared this take recently:

A note on panels:

Please structure these. Dropping someone into a room with five people they’ve never met and no clear format biases performance toward extroverts. Instead:

• Assign a moderator

• Share discussion themes ahead of time

• Let each panelist lead one or two focused questions

• Build in space for the candidate to ask their own

That’s not just more equitable, it’s more effective.

Assessing quality + craft

Portfolios are the most common way we assess design quality. They’re seen as the currency of the field. Then we usually follow with a deeper dive: a case study presentation.

A huge pitfall we fall into here, though, is  that case studies carry baggage. We tend to favor the familiar: work we understand, companies we admire, processes we recognize. Our brains love shortcuts. So, when we ‘get’ someone’s work because we’re familiar with their tools, processes, or context, we tend to assume competence.

Maria had a perspective on this, too:

I personally think case studies still have value. They do help show how someone frames a problem, navigates ambiguity, and communicates a solution—important skills in any design role. But Maria’s right: we need to check ourselves. Are we looking for familiarity? Or the skills the role truly needs?

When I worked on the content design team at Mailchimp, we experimented with offering candidates a choice: a live case study presentation or a take-home. We were clear about what each option was meant to demonstrate, and let candidates decide which format worked better for them. That choice—letting candidates pick the format that felt best for them—wasn’t just a nice gesture. It acknowledged that not everyone presents or processes information the same way. Most opted for the take-home. Small sample size,  for sure, but it told us something.

Two quick notes on presentations:

1. Don’t make someone present their work more than once. Presenting is cognitively and emotionally taxing.

2. Set the candidate up for success. Let them know how and when questions will be asked, and support them like you would a colleague giving a team share.

Determining cultural fit:

Culture fit is a loaded phrase. It often reinforces sameness, and can edge into ableism or unconscious bias. But we still need to ask: will this person thrive here?

The best advice I can give is this: instead of hiring people who match your culture, hire people who expand it. At my current workplace, we call this “culture contribution”. This means we ask “How will this person enrich the team? What perspectives or practices do they bring that we don’t already have?”

Sample questions might include:

• “What’s a perspective you’ve brought to a team that changed how a problem was approached?”

• “Can you describe a time when you helped build or evolve a team’s culture intentionally?”

• “What are some values or working norms that are important to you—and how do you make space for them in your work?”

A note on backfilling roles:

One of the biggest traps in hiring is trying to replace someone exactly, especially when they were well-liked or high-performing.

I’ve been in loops where I was subtly compared to the predecessor. I’ve heard phrases like “we had such a great working relationship” and “what I really appreciated about them was…”

Reader: it didn’t feel great. I knew that I was being measured on some intangibles and very personal experiences that I had no context for. Just like you wouldn’t go on a first date and talk about how great your ex was, you shouldn’t bring someone into an interview and try to assess whether they’re a clone of the person they’re replacing.

Hire for where the team is going, not where it was.

Valuing lived experience

I touched on this earlier, but it’s worth reiterating: your candidate’s value isn’t measured by how recognizable their past work is. In fact, that mindset can limit your team’s growth. Aside from the bias and relatability traps I’ve already mentioned, you also risk overlooking candidates with experience solving problems your team hasn’t yet encountered.

Say one candidate designed a super polished onboarding flow at a buzzy startup. Another spent five years working on public-facing services at a local government agency. The latter may not have the same visual polish… but they may bring a deep understanding of accessibility, compliance, and service design in high-stakes environments.

That’s the kind of experience that rarely shows up in case studies but often makes a big impact in practice. When evaluating candidates, ask: What kinds of problems has this person had to solve? What constraints have they worked within? What perspectives do they bring that we don’t currently have?

Creating good conditions for your candidates to thrive

As a hiring manager you should treat a candidate with the same amount of respect and grace as you would a member of your team. After all, they might be, someday.

Some good principles to consider:

• Encourage candidates to ask hard questions; about team culture, leadership support, product direction. Don’t just allow it; expect it. Transparency is part of equity.

• Give your team as much information and context as possible—links to resumes, portfolios, question banks, etc.—and set the expectation that they review them ahead of time.

• If your interview loop runs longer than 90 minutes, offer a short break. Don’t make candidates ask for it. Just like in workshops or retros, pauses help people reset and show up at their best.

• Tell your team the types of qualities you are looking for, the skills the role needs to fill, and align on what “great” looks like before interviews start, not after.

• Make it an expectation that your team is 100% present in interviews, especially candidate presentations. It’s a bummer to present to a team when you know that they’re partially listening while they fire off some quick Slack messages. 

• It should go without saying but… don’t debrief or critique performance on the side, mid-session; save it for after the loop is complete. 

Equitable hiring for design leaders

While this piece focuses primarily on hiring IC designers, I want to briefly acknowledge how these ideas apply to design leadership roles, too. Those loops are a whole different ball game. The focus often shifts toward showcasing polished outcomes but, the reality is, leaders rarely design those outcomes themselves. We’re asked to represent work we influenced, not executed, and still judged by the final fidelity.

In these situations we fall into similar traps: favoring shiny portfolios, well-rehearsed narratives, and big-brand polish; often overlooking, or not giving space, to talk about the messier, more systemic leadership work that’s harder to put on a slide.

There’s a lot more I want to unpack about how design leadership hiring is specifically broken. But in the interest of time (and your attention span), I’ll save that for a future post.

Adopting a system approach to equitable hiring

As you read this and reflect on how you could or should adjust your hiring process to make it more equitable, remember this: hiring is a system. A job description is a design artifact. So is an interview loop. So is the list of “must-haves” you put in a recruiter brief. 

If we care about clarity, accessibility, and inclusion in the things we build, we have to make sure those same values are present in the systems we use to bring people in the door.

Equitable hiring is about designing a system that doesn’t rely on luck, referrals, or “impressiveness” to spot talent. It’s about making that talent visible in the first place. If the only people who shine in your process are the ones who already know how the game works, then the process itself is broken.

Things I’ve been reading

• The time for UX solidarity by Mike Schindler. A sharp, honest reminder that empathy in design means nothing if we don’t extend it to each other. This piece calls out performative allyship and pushes for real, systemic change; especially from those of us in positions of relative power. Not an easy read, but an essential one.

• Designing for people: what architecture can learn from UX by Marcin Treder. A thoughtful read on how physical architecture can borrow from UX principles—especially around human-centered iteration and designing with users, not just for them. Some parts get a little rosy about the influence of UX, but the core idea sticks: good design is responsive, inclusive, and never really finished.

• In a collapsing world, what makes a good designer? by Sam Suppiah. A reflective, slightly existential take on design’s role in a world that feels increasingly unstable. It doesn’t offer easy answers (intentionally), but instead sits with the discomfort and suggests that maybe care, humility, and usefulness matter more than craft right now.